Characterizing Data Sharing in Civil Infrastructure Engineering: Current Practice, Future Vision, Barriers, and Promotion Strategies

Data sharing between different organizations is critical in supporting decision making in civil infrastructure engineering projects (e.g., transportation projects). Understanding the characteristics of data-sharing-related factors in civil infrastructure engineering is crucial for the civil engineering community to identify the priorities in promoting data sharing. The ASCE Data Sensing and Analysis (DSA) Committee initiated an investigation on data-sharing barriers in civil infrastructure engineering. This work produced (1) a classification of data-collection and data-use contexts in the domain of civil infrastructure engineering; (2) a comprehensive classification of data-sharing barriers and data-sharing promotion strategies in this domain; and (3) a synthesis of the opinions about the current practices, future vision, barriers, and data-sharing promotion strategies from civil infrastructure professionals and researchers using an online survey. The survey results revealed that (1) more data-sharing activities are occurring within the organizations, such as academia, government agencies, and for-profit corporations, compared with data exchanges among these communities; (2) "if there is a cost sharing in the data sharing," is the condition that makes data providers more willing to share data with others; and (3) compared with technology improvements, the protocol of data sharing in the business domain has more potential in promoting data sharing. Meanwhile, this research identified the top five priorities among 20 data-sharing promotion strategies, which are protocol in industry and organization, data-standard regulation, data validity, data security protection, and large-scale data-sharing technology. These five priorities play critical roles in a roadmap showing how policy, business models, and technical solutions should cooperate to promote data sharing in civil infrastructure engineering.